EAOT: Making Props For My Zine

Food Packaging

The first thing that came to mind when I was exploring different ways to make fabric was food packaging. I collected all sorts of things such as fruit netting, rafia string, and bread sleeve.

With these items I thought to myself, what can I make with these? When I realised that since the fruit netting was a literal net, I could take apart the items I had collected and weave it through the netting. I had found it

slightly difficult at first since the net is made up of a soft styrofoam, I had to be delicate. I cut up the bread sleeve into strips and wove it in and out through the net, alternating the direction each row to give variation. I did not have enough rafia string so there was only one row of that in the net.

Newspaper

As many people do, my family saves up old newspapers so we can recycle them. I had remembered an old technique of creating paper chains that I had learnt previously and thought of using newspaper to make a piece of fabric. It was a very tedious process as I had to cut out small rectangles out of it in which I used up two whole newspapers to create the whole piece of fabric which ended up being no bigger than 60 cm. It was a very tedious process as I had to cut out small rectangles out of it in which I used up two whole newspapers to create the whole piece of fabric.

To create each chain, I folded up rectangles (9.5 x 4 cm) length ways twice, and took the edges and folded that into the middle. Each piece was roughly 1 cm long and looked like a V when folded. I created five of these making the fabric 15 cm tall by 60 cm (±) wide. Each row consisted of 47 links where I then connected the ends with one extra link. The handle of the bag is made up of a 48 link chain in which it was simply connected with a clear string at the sides of the bag. A rectangle cut out of a cereal box was then stuck on inside as the base.

Plastic

As we all know, plastic is a big threat to our ecosystems. From the previous two fabrics I made, weaving is the main motif so to stick to that theme, I weaved plastic bags I had collected. I first made a test piece to see whether my idea would work or not.

I cut up strips of plastic bags that were an inch wide. With these strips, I folded them in half and taped them down onto a cutting mat. Alternating colours I wove the horizontal strips through the vertical strips.

To bond the fabric together, I placed a sheet of butter paper on top and with an iron on a low setting I slowly ironed the piece. I did not expect the plastic to shrink as much as it did which is why you can see that it is fairly tight in the center. There were certain areas where small holes were visible due to the tightness of the weave. The tighter the weave, the less holes there will be when ironing.

The checkered pattern reminds me of flannels that people have been wearing for many years. With that, I had to think of what I could possible make with the fabric I had made. Since I had already created a bag, it made sense to create another accessory piece to stick to the theme. Since the checkered pattern has been a 'style trend' that has stuck around for many years, I thought of creating a bucket had since it is a reoccurring trend.

I created my pattern pieces based on a hat that I already own and traced it out onto the fabric. I have always had an interest in fashion design so making the pattern piece was not that difficult as I have some experience. Unfortunately I did not have enough coloured plastic to have a fully coloured had so I had to improvise, using white plastic for the brim and top of the hat and had the pattern on the side since that is the most visible area when worn.